


Secret Intuitive

by johnny cade (johnnycake)



Series: Switchblades and Leather [23]
Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Gen, M/M, csa mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 14:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14979050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/johnny%20cade
Summary: Darry knows what people are thinking even when they don't tell him. Including two of his best friends.





	Secret Intuitive

**Author's Note:**

> short n sweet!!

Darry had always had this uncanny ability to be able to read people’s expressions and know what they were thinking. He’d had the ability ever since he could remember and, more than once, he’d gotten in trouble for say something one of his parents’ or siblings were thinking that they hadn’t wanted said. They’d used a very specific word for that every time it happened: eerie. Over the years he’d realized that it was best not to let people know he had this ability and soon just about everyone had forgotten he had it. Then he taught himself how to insert it into conversation without upsetting people and then people had a new word for him: intuitive.

As a result of this, Darry knew things about the gang that they didn’t even know about themselves or each other. But there were two things in particular he knew, two things that were big secrets, things he could never tell anyone else. It wouldn’t be safe to. He wasn’t sure how the others would react. To either one of the secrets.

The first was that Johnny Cade was sexually abused by his father.

Anyone who knew him, might think that the big secret was he wasn’t born a boy and, yes, it was true that was a big secret of his, but the gang knew that. They’d always known that. They just didn’t care. But not all of the gang knew _this_.

They knew Johnny’s father beat him. They knew his mother screamed at him and beat him too. But none of them knew about his father’s nightly visits.

To Darry, it had been easy to figure out.

Johnny didn’t like being touched. He flinched whenever anyone even got near him without warning him first. Especially people he didn’t know. Especially men. The gang even could make him flinch or wince if they moved too fast. He always wore pants and his denim jacket, even in the middle of summer when it was so hot out the rest of them were in t-shirts and tank tops and still felt like they were going to melt into the pavement. And he always curled into himself: crossing his legs, putting his hands between his thighs, trying to make himself as small as possible, trying to be unnoticed.

Darry’d had a talk with the gang once he’d figured it out. He hadn’t said the reasoning behind it. He’d just used what they already knew and tried to explain to the gang that way that they had to be careful around Johnny. It hadn’t _really_ been necessary. Everyone already knew everything he told them; they all cared about Johnny a lot, after all, he was the gang’s pet, but once Darry put two and two together, once he figured out about the sexual abuse, he felt he had to say something. He couldn’t just let it lie without telling people to be careful with him.

It wasn’t fair either. Johnny already went through so much with his parents beating him, with the whole damn town picking on him for no other reason than they were all miserable and any ray of sunlight they had to stamp out because they wanted everyone else to be miserable like they were. The idea that he was suffering through this as well made Darry want to go into a room made of glass, full of porcelain plates, with a baseball bat and small everything to bits. Johnny was the kindest, sweetest kid he knew. He wasn’t like a typical greaser. He didn’t break the law. He didn’t even step on bugs or throw his cigarette butts into the grass. And yet, he seemed to be the one that suffered the most.

It just wasn’t fair. And the worst part was there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.

The second secret was that Dallas was in love with Johnny.

This was another one that Darry thought was obvious to anyone with eyes, but apparently it wasn’t. Not even Johnny knew Dallas loved him and Darry knew that Johnny loved him back. It wouldn’t be safe for them to be together. Not in Tulsa. Maybe not anywhere. He knew that. He knew how boys who liked boys were treated and yet...he wanted to lock them in the barn on the outskirts of town until they admitted to one another how they felt.

They stared at each other for far longer than most people did. They laughed at each other’s jokes, even the ones that weren’t funny. Dally protected Johnny from anything and everything. He cared about Johnny in a way he cared about no one and nothing else. And Johnny hero-worshipped Dally. Dallas Winston the thug was the boy who he thought was better than anyone else. Objectively, there was no reason for him to think that aside from how Dallas protected him, so Darry supposed he could understand, but even so, he felt he couldn’t be the only one in the gang that saw it.

A part of him wanted to talk to the gang about this too, wanted to warn them that if any of them tried anything or got either one of them hurt, he’d take it out of their hides.

But that was only assuming either Johnny or Dallas grew a spine and got up the courage to ask the other out themselves. Darry didn’t know if that would ever happen. Both of them were terrified of being rejected for different reasons. Both of their reasons made sense. And, at the end of the day, it really wasn’t any of his business. He would just have to wait and see what happened.

Darry’s intuitiveness had gotten him in trouble when he was a child. He was sure that there would come a time when it would get him in trouble as an adult too, but right now he was protecting two of his best friends. He kept their secrets.

And he kept the rest of the gang’s secrets too

 

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write something about darry so i did.


End file.
